I am up at 4:30 this morning and first thing I do is let Pippin (my daschund) out to potty. Well, she has a bad habit of barking (which is very uncool that time of day) so I tell her "No bark!" Despite my "No bark!", she was out the door barking! Jack joins in with "No bark!" and Cookie starts barking just like Pippin. Now, this equates to one human and one parrot yelling "No bark!" and one dog and second parrot barking. What a cacophony! I am surprized the neighbors didn't called the cops!

dawn
Crackerjack and Cookie

That is hilarious. Maybe your neighbours are just so confused they have given up trying to work out which animal is doing what

Bark!
What's that?

I have a one year old Lab...talk about barking!

cute or maybe no so cute

You are so funny! What a mess! hee hee!

I take it you are awake by that time....
My sympathies.

I have a No Bark version
My cat always had a terrible voice. She also had bad teeth & when she went deaf it just got more crazy. Because of her terrible voice she could wake the dead. Because of her bad teeth she needed to eat only wet food. Wet food cant stay out all the time & she ate mostly at night. We would do shifts in the night to get her food. Because of her deafness she would call to me even louder. She's call from the kitchen, anywhere she was & couldn't see us & she'd call from the foot of the bed to ask if we could cuddle. It was a practice of compassion, patience & love every night for over 4 years.

They have to know they are loved by our actions. YOur little Daschund sounds like a little imp.

LOL - Yes, I know exactly how that goes only I usually have between 13 to 15 dogs in my house so you can imagine the amount of barking that goes on here. Thankfully, I live in a five acre property and in a very rural area so my neighbors are not bothered by it. And two of my parrots do go: "SHUT UP!" (Sophie knew it from her previous home and Ellie learned it from her) whenever the dogs start barking. They also say it when the mini macaws start with their incessant AY AY AY - AMA AMA AMA - AY AY AY and when my husband comes into the birdroom and stars arguing with me (smart cookies that they are, they figured it out themselves because I certainly have never told my husband to SHUT UP! -not in front of them anyway -LOL)

But, sweetie, be careful with the time schedule. 4:30 am is too early to get them up this time of the year, the sun is not up yet and, if you turn on the lights on them when it's still dark outside, you are not only depriving them of the sunrise, you are also making their days too long. The birds already noticed the shorter days and longer nights and there is a change in the air, breeding behaviors are almost all gone (except for a few stubborn cockatiels and canaries), full molt should be setting in any day now and their mood is beginning to mellow.

Thanks for all your crazy comments. Talking......and barking....birds sure make our life interesting, don't they?!

Beatriz.....You make a very good point about the early rise for Jack and Cookie. I have been concerned about this myself. I really don't have a choice though. I have to get up myself to get ready for work.......I have to get them out of their sleep cage and down stairs to their regular cages and prepare their breakfast.......all before 5:30 when I am out the door. Unfortunately, I live alone so I don't have anyone to do this for me at a later time. I hope they are getting lots more sleep after I leave. They seem to be insanely well-adjusted birds and I have seen no ill-effects of our schedule. I pray I am not harming them in some way I don't recognize. They do let me know when they are tired and it is time for night-night. They do not get 12 hours of sleep though.....unless they are sleeping ALOT during the day.

We should open a new thread and discuss how the rest of you in the forum live around your bird's schedules......or how your birds have adapted to yours. I have read what the books say, but I would like ya'lls input on what you have personally discovered about how sleep patterns affect them..........short term and long term. Anyone?

dawn
Crackerjack and Cookie

Unfortunately, good sleep is more than the total number of hours a bird sleeps in a day. It all has to do with melatonin production and, in a lesser degree, adenosine. Exposure to twilight (and darkness) triggers the pineal gland into producing melatonin which, in turn, does not only establish the circadian and circannual cycles that birds' endocrine systems need to stay healthy but is also directly related to a number of things like the immune system and even aging. Birds need uninterrupted sleep in the dark and quiet. Naps during the day do not make up completely for the lack of sleep at night because, contrary to what most people believe, sleep is not a passive activity but a dynamic one with phases or cycles that follow one another in a pre-determined sequence (birds, like humans, have REM and non-REM stages of sleep). These cycles have both endogenous and exogenous triggers and there are stages of sleep that cannot be adequately achieved when there is light. Plus, long days would screw up the point of refractoriness even if the bird naps for hours and hours during the day.